It is known in the art of treating contaminated solvents such as effluent water to employ evaporation and condensation stages in an effort to remove solutes, using a variety of systems and methods. However, conventional solvent treatment systems generally lack the ability to process a broad range of effluent produced from common industrial practices. For example, membranes made from organic polymers or compounds are susceptible to corrosion, therefore limiting their ability to process tailings from oil, gas or mining operations or chemical waste products. Systems for distilling water such as large boilers are well known to encounter scaling and maintenance issues, and moreover require a large amount of additional energy to bring the solvent to a vapor phase. Vacuum or high pressure systems must be designed to safely contain the processes and require additional turbo-machinery, which significantly increases costs. Finally, zero-liquid discharge systems that incorporate crystallizers typically use high-cost titanium to prevent corrosion in the high-pressure, high-temperature environments employed.
Many prior art systems have been developed to process contaminated solvent. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,121,101 to Merritt discloses a potable water production apparatus that uses a closed loop air cycle with vapour compression refrigeration; however, the condensing system is operated at or below freezing, thereby introducing complexity and additional cost.
What is needed, therefore, is a relatively simple treatment system that can operate at or near atmospheric pressure and temperature conditions for treating water or a variety of other non-azeotrope solvents, and preferably achieving desirable efficiencies at a lower cost than most conventional systems.